Is a warning for non mobile-friendly websites coming soon?

Does your website display correctly on mobile devices? If not, you should fix this problem as soon as possible, because visitors could very well soon let you down – thanks to Google!

Nowadays, “responsive” is the watchword when developing a new website. Internet users should indeed be able to visit a website using any possible device – the display should automatically adapt to any screen, from a desktop to a tablet, including a phablet and a “normal” smartphone. And yet, many websites still do not display correctly (or do not display at all) on the small screens of mobile phones.

Is it so with your website? Then, you should really do something about this as soon as you can. Last year, Google already announced its intention to penalise websites that are not optimised for mobile devices.

Apparently, Google has now put its money where its mouth is: the giant from Mountain View is now conducting an experiment with a pictogram (a crossed-out phone) displayed in the search results next to non mobile-friendly websites, when the request comes from a mobile device.

As previously mentioned, this is only an experiment, exactly like when Google conducted a reverse experiment some time ago. Back then, websites optimised for mobile devices got another special pictogram. Of course, the negative symbol is much more powerful than the positive one – mobile users will undoubtedly be discouraged by the negative pictogram and will not click on links leading to non mobile websites.

Positive or negative, it seems clear that Google plans to consider optimisation for mobile websites when evaluating your website and determining its ranking. Can Internet users visit your website on the most popular smartphones? Do the test on a mobile emulator like MobileTest.me and, if necessary, make sure to make your website responsive, in order to avoid negative evaluation from Google!